context: The 20th Party Congress Report underlined the CPC’s goal to build a new social governance system that expands Party-society collaboration, urging citizens to shore up local management responsibilities. A new Social Work Department was founded in 2023 to facilitate social restructuring, injecting further momentum in Party-led grassroots oversight.
Refining the ‘jointly-built, jointly-governed and jointly-shared social governance system’ helps upgrade national management capacity, contends Lian Hongping 连宏萍 and Liu Lili 刘丽莉 Beijing Xi Jinping Thought Research Centre contracted researcher.
There is a need to strengthen Party-building initiatives on the grassroots level. Grassroot Party apparatus helps
- boost local community management capabilities via the Party’s system advantages
- ensure
- strong Party leadership
- governments abide by the law and observe their responsibilities
- effective collaboration of societal forces
- community residents holistically participate in social governance
Through Party-building, the CPC can modernise urban community governance
- build an organisational system that
- fosters effective communication from top to bottom
- hastens policy implementation
- consolidate hierarchical oversight
- vertically: build Party command chains embedded in local communities
- community Party committee (grassroots headquarters)
- grid Party branch
- apartment Party cells
- horizontally: facilitate collaboration between Party apparatus
- community Party branch committee and residential committee members ought to exchange posts from time to time
- strengthen Party presence in non-public economic and social organisations
- refine grid functions: integrate Party-building, social governance and social relief
- vertically: build Party command chains embedded in local communities
In recent years, with expanding grassroots initiatives, social governance faces the following challenges
- too massive of a management scope
- scarcity of resources
- unable to provide adequate services
There is a need to urge social forces to shore up local responsibilities
- maximise the use of local resources
- local Party community service centre can connect with local self-management organisations
- urge Party cells, social units and enterprises to participate in social governance
- encourage professional organisations to assist local community workers
- create service groups to lead charities and social organisations
- expand their influence and discourse power in grassroots governance
- refine the community worker management system
- build a professional management system to retain talents
- offer diverse training to community workers
- advance stability maintenance capabilities